From Chris Pepin…
I was watching an episode of Garfield and Friends yesterday and noticed that James Earl Jones did the voice of a ghost in the episode. How did you manage to get him to work on the show?
We recorded the voice tracks for that show at a terrific little place in Hollywood called Buzzy's Recording Studio. Usually, when we were there, someone else was recording in one of the other studios there and one day it was James Earl Jones, doing narration for some sort of public service announcement. He strolled in to watch our fine actors at work and later, we had a nice conversation about all sorts of things, one being that he'd seen and liked our show.
To my surprise, he said, "I'm going to be in town a lot over the next month or so. If you come across a role that would suit me, I'd love to do a voice on your show." I said, "You know…we have a recording session in two weeks and there's a part in one of those scripts that would be perfect for you." I told him what it paid and he said, "I don't care about the money. I just want to do a voice in a Garfield cartoon."
So we set it up and then I had to write a cartoon with a part for a guy with a very deep, sinister voice…because, of course, we had nothing at all in the works when I said I had a role for him and he knew it. But he came in two weeks later and he was an absolute delight. Of course.
